Intel Arc A770 and A750 review: welcome player three

Hitman 3, Hitman 3 RT, F1 22, F1 22 RT.

Review by Will Judd Deputy Editor, Digital Foundry

Published on Oct. 5, 2022

To conclude our standard GPU test suite, we'll take a look at two DirectX 12 titles that offer tough integrated benchmarks with optional RT modes: Hitman 3 and F1 22. Our Arc graphics cards ought to be at home in these titles, and with Intel claiming better-than-Nvidia RT performance, we're expecting big things with RT enabled - but we're having a look at non-RT performance too as the majority of games released still are of the traditional rasterised variety.

To perform our testing, we produced over 380 video-captured benchmark runs spanning 13 games, three resolutions and seven graphics cards from three manufacturers, plus additional tests for XeSS - each handcrafted by skilled artisans for your enjoyment.

Hitman 3

Hitman 3: DX12, Max, RT off

Hitman 3's Dubai stage is the more GPU heavy of the two benchmarks on offer here; you might remember that we use the Dartmoor benchmark for our CPU testing. The game with RT disabled shows strong results for Intel's Arc GPUs, with the Arc A770 (165fps) midway between Nvidia's RTX 3060 (150fps) and 3060 Ti (181fps). There's a modest five percent performance advantage for the A770 over the A750, so the A750 also outpaces the RTX 3060 here while costing significantly less. The Intel GPUs get a bit stronger at 1440p, as driver overhead becomes less of a factor, with the RTX 3070's lead over the A770 shrinking to just 11 percent. Even at 4K, the Arc cards manage to average 60fps, and XeSS is available to boost performance further - as we'll see on the next page.

Hitman 3 RT

Hitman 3 RT: DX12, Max

With RT enabled and no XeSS or DLSS in play, all of our cards are now most comfortable at 1080p, with the A750 averaging 39fps and the A770 27 percent faster, at 50fps. That's just three fps behind the efforts of the RTX 3060 Ti, a margin that shrinks further at 1440p. The $289 A750 is considerably faster than the RX 6700 XT here, with an 11 percent performance advantage over a card that retails for noth of $400 - so it's fair to say that Intel doesn't appear to share the RT weakness of AMD's RDNA2 cards.

F1 22

F1 22: Ultra High Preset, RT off, TAA + FFX Sharpening

F1 22's integrated benchmark has plenty of options, but we've opted for the classic high-intensity scenario: a single wet lap in Singapore, starting 10th on the grid and proceeding in a procession to the chequered flag. With the ultra high preset enabled, including HBAO+ on AMD cards that otherwise default to FidelityFX CACAO, but RT disabled, the RTX 3060 is 10 percent faster than the A770 at 1080p. The Nvidia advantage halves to five percent at 1440p, then disappears entirely at 4K - where the A770's average result of 54fps is quite playable and rivals that of the AMD RX 6600 XT at 56.5fps.

F1 22 RT

F1 22 RT: DX12, Ultra High, TAA + FFX Sharpening

With RT enabled, we again see a relative improvement for Intel against AMD - the A770 now leads the RX 6600 XT by 10 percent - but Nvidia maintains its 10 percent advantage for the 3060 over the A770. We're more or less level at 1440p and 4K, but frame-rates in the absence of an image upscaling solution have collapsed to non-playable levels. So: decent results in F1 22, but Intel's cards didn't show the same performance improvement against Nvidia that they did in Hitman 3 once RT was enabled.

Right, that brings our standard GPU test suite to an end, so now let's move onto our specialised benchmarks for this card, focused around its XeSS image upscaling tech in the few games that currently (or soon!) support the technique.